This book has been getting rave reviews and with retellings of Fairy Tales the hottest thing right now, I had to see if the hype was true. While not disappointing, I was having a hard time trying to figure out how to pitch this one to my kids.
In Breadcrumbs Hazel is best friends with her next door neighbor Jack. After Jack gets a sliver of a bewitched mirror in his eyes, his heart turns to ice and he disappears with a mysterious Ice Queen who appears out of the forest. While his male friends have been vying for his attention all year, it is only Hazel who will venture into the forest to save him from the evil queen and discover for herself the desire to return home and not be willed away by her own dark wishes.
Now while this all sounds thrilling and mysterious, all of that takes place in the second half of the book and the second half doesn't even start until a hundred pages in. The first half is setting up how Hazel is isolated in her new school and feels very separate from everyone else. It sets up the problems in her and Jack's lives and makes quite a few comparisons to other novels. In fact, at one moment, I couldn't help being reminded of When You Reach Me only to have the author mention that Hazel was reading that book and couldn't help also being reminded of her situation within it. This made it feel a little cheap to me, especially when the second half was a re-telling (or borrowing) of the Snow Queen or Narnia story. If you boiled down all the excess, you really just had a re-hashing of other people's books.
Now this sentiment might make it sound like I didn't like the book. I did. I especially enjoyed the second half mainly because there was tension and scariness and a quicker pace, but the first half seems to be too introspective. This makes it hard to sell to the kids. Do they want to read a book about a girl having trouble fitting in or a book about a fairy tale world? There isn't really too much fairy tale in the beginning to get most kids to get to the second half for the pay off. This makes me sad.
Also...I didn't like the illustrations or the color choice for the cover. I think the cover is fantastic looking but again with the Disney princess pink and blues that will prevent boys from picking it up. The illustrations look like computer rendered drawings in the style of Disney cartoons which makes them look too sweet to me. I would have loved some dark and mysterious pen and ink style drawings to give in an eery feel instead.
Interest level: Grades 3-6 Intended reading level: Grade 5
Genre: fantasy (fairy/folk tale), coming-of-age
Comparable titles: Noah Barleywater Runs Away, The Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, When You Reach Me
Book Connections: Snow Queen tales, wolves, winter, new kids experiences
No comments:
Post a Comment